Wiggo: The Reluctant King of Cycling

By

Jason Gay

Updated Aug. 1, 2012 8:40 p.m. ET

He hated the stupid throne.

It was obvious the moment Bradley Wiggins sat down. The chair was an obnoxious piece of Olympic stagecraft, installed because the men's and women's cycling time trials started and finished at Hampton Court Palace, a sprawling former Xanadu for the likes of Henry VIII. Someone decided it'd be cute if the winning bike racers sat in velvet-cushioned thrones, like scrawny little kings, protected from the rabble by 16th century Tudor brick.

ENLARGE

Bradley Wiggins of Britain sits in a golden chair before the medal ceremony on Wednesday.
Zuma Press

Wiggins smirked. He had just won a gold medal, the fourth gold of his cycling career, and surely the most important, but this furniture was embarrassing. He squirmed and flashed a peace sign for the cameras, looking more sheepish than sovereign. Wiggins didn't consider Hampton Court part of London—not his London, at least. Weren't these Olympic Games already under siege from pitchforks? Organizers were getting blasted for all the tickets left unclaimed by sponsors and VIPs; the newspapers were running shameful photos of action unfolding before empty seats.

That was it. Wiggins bolted off the silly throne. With no escort or security, he walked over and hopped aboard the seat where he is most comfortable: his bicycle. He mounted his sleek, aerodynamic ride, spun the pedals and rode past the cameras, Olympic bigwigs and ticketed VIPs—"a bit of a prawn sandwich fest," he called it later—and out beyond the palace gates to see his wife and family and the thousands of people still gathered on the street. "The real fans," he called them.

"The great thing about cycling is that anyone can come watch it, normally," Wiggins said.

He was still wrestling with all this. How could he not be wrestling with this? Ten days ago Wiggins was on the Champs-Elysees in a yellow jersey, the first British champion of the Tour de France. A few days before that, he was clinging to his handlebars in the Pyrenees, struggling to keep first place. Now he was a national sports icon. Wiggo. Celebrity. Hope. Target. On Wednesday morning The Daily Mirror published the outline of Wiggins's bushy mod haircut on its front page, with a tiny pair of scissors, telling readers to cut it out and wear the 'do to the time trial. When Wiggins blistered 44 kilometers through these streets, grandmothers screamed his name, fake sideburns pasted to fleshy faces.

It was all a bit much. Britain surely will be coming at Wiggins for a possible knighthood. Sir Wiggo! The suggestion made him uneasy. "Doesn't quite sound right, does it?" he said. "As much of an honor as it would be to receive something like that, I don't think I'd ever use it. I'd just put it in the drawer."

He is humble and not humble, charming and prickly, unruffled and deeply sensitive. Less than two weeks ago, an irritated Wiggins had groused that nobody had properly praised him for a great Tour performance and season of racing. Before that, Wiggins had blown up over anonymous skeptics on Twitter, lashing at them for "bone-idleness." But later, he wrote a soul-baring essay in the Guardian in which he laid out his rejection of doping culture and assured fans he was clean. "I would potentially stand to lose everything," Wiggins wrote. Reputation. Marriage. Family. House. He said he'd rather work in the supermarket stocking shelves.

That's the burden of a Tour. The frenzy of that monster will grind a champion down, physically, mentally, spiritually. But Wiggins had no time to recover—right away, he faced an Olympics in his hometown, and an overbearing pressure to deliver. It was both a dream and a chore. On Saturday Wiggins and his British teammates failed to escort sprinter Mark Cavendish to the line for a presumed gold medal, and it was treated like a civic letdown. Now it was midweek and Team GB had failed to win a gold in anything. In the morning, rowers Helen Glover and Heather Stanning relieved some pressure with a golden finish in women's crew, but a cycling-mad country still wanted an exclamation point from its Wiggo.

"It had to be one color, really, today," Wiggins said of the medal expectations.

He tucked his head down and did it. He wore a bulbous red helmet with a Royal Air Force roundel sticker and he buried himself, ripping time away from competitors like Germany's Tony Martin, Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, and his own Team GB colleague, Chris Froome. Wiggins had dominated time trials all year, and this was more of the same. It helped that the mob on the route was hungry, pulling desperately for their own. "Not just cheering, but screaming our names," Chris Froome said after. "It leaves me in goosebumps, just thinking about it."

When Wiggins finished, he crumpled to the pavement, as suffering time trialists do, too exhausted to budge another meter. Cancellara, the defending Olympic champion, remained on the course, and only after the Swiss veteran finished in seventh place did Wiggins dare accept a congratulations. He raised his hands in the air, the zipper on his Team GB skinsuit yanked low, revealing his pale, skinny chest, where his children's names, Ben and Isabella, are tattooed in cursive over his heart.

He looked like a rock star. And he was a rock star. Wiggy Stardust.

The superlatives are easy. Wiggins is the breakthrough British Tour champ, the first yellow jersey winner to follow victory in Paris with a gold. Because of his prior career as a world-class track rider, Wiggins has seven Olympic medals total, the most in U.K. history, surpassing the six won by the rower Sir Steven Redgrave, who carried the Olympic torch into the opening ceremony last week.

Wiggins is 32 years old and it will never be the same. They will talk about him generations from now, the next time London gets itself a Games. He wants this to be normal, but how can he maintain normal? When Wiggins heard from the queen after winning in France, he joked he was more excited to get a congratulations from Johnny Marr, the guitarist from the legendary band, The Smiths. When he was asked how he'd let his latest gold medal sink in, he shot back: "Vodka tonic helps."

"I don't know what comes next, really," Wiggins said.

He knew one thing. This day was for the people outside the palace gates. The queen can knight him if it is destiny. Wiggins said he'll always be Brad.

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